AI Search Visibility: Why Most PR Teams Still Don't Own It

Most PR teams agree that AI search visibility matters, but most haven't decided who is responsible for it. A new Muck Rack study finds 75% of PR professionals see Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) as important to their strategy, yet 29% say no one at their organisation owns it and 39% aren't measuring it at all. That gap between recognising the problem and managing it is now one of the biggest blind spots in marketing.

What did the new study find?

Muck Rack's latest State of PR report surveyed 1,115 PR professionals between 14 May and 12 June 2026, with 971 qualified responses making the final cut, according to Muck Rack's press release. Nearly three-quarters of PR professionals say GEO is at least somewhat important to their communications strategy, yet 29% say no one at their organisation owns it.

The measurement gap is just as stark. 39% of professionals say they aren't measuring GEO success at all, despite 45% citing media measurement as a major part of their work. That mismatch matters because you cannot improve what you refuse to track, and right now nearly four in ten teams have chosen not to look.

With 61% expecting AI and automation to grow over the next five years, AI search visibility has quickly become a strategic priority without a clear plan behind it. Muck Rack cofounder and CEO Greg Galant put it plainly: "Most PR professionals recognise that AI visibility matters, but many companies still haven't decided who owns it or how to measure it. This is a critical moment where better data and better tools can make all the difference in how we approach this shift in the PR workflow."

Why does this ownership gap matter for your business?

If nobody owns AI visibility inside your organisation, it falls between departments, and that is expensive. Marketing assumes it's a search engine optimisation job. SEO assumes it's a PR job. Communications assumes it's a technical, website-level job. Everyone assumes someone else is watching what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews say about the brand, and often no one is.

This is not a small channel to ignore. Semrush's expanded 2026 AI Visibility Index, which analysed 126 million US AI search prompts between January and April 2026, found a clear performance split. Among organisations that fully integrate SEO and AI visibility into a unified workflow, 81% reported increased traffic or leads from AI platforms, compared with only 36% among organisations managing the two areas separately.

That 45-point gap is the practical cost of the ownership problem Muck Rack has just documented. Companies that treat AI visibility as somebody's side project are leaving growth on the table compared with those that have built it into how they already run SEO and content.

The measurement side is just as concerning. Semrush's research adds another layer: 45% of marketing leaders cannot accurately measure their brand visibility within AI-generated answers, while only 9% have the tools to track all relevant metrics across platforms. Put the two studies together and a pattern emerges: most organisations neither own AI visibility internally nor have the tools to measure it externally. That's a double blind spot, not a single one.

It also matters because AI-driven discovery is growing fast, not slowly. Adobe data cited in Semrush's report shows AI traffic to US retail sites surged 1,324% between October 2024 and May 2026, while in the travel sector AI traffic rose 2,215% over the same period. Every month that ownership stays unresolved, more prospective customers are forming an opinion of your brand through a channel nobody at your company is actively managing.

What's driving the confusion?

Part of the problem is that AI visibility doesn't fit neatly into any one team's existing remit. It touches technical SEO (can AI crawlers reach and parse your content), PR and communications (are you being mentioned and cited by trusted third parties), and product marketing (does the language AI systems use to describe you match what you actually offer).

Muck Rack's study also found that 51% of PR professionals say thought leadership has become increasingly vital to their jobs, up 5% from last year, with the rising emphasis on thought leadership tracking closely alongside LinkedIn's growing importance. That's a clue about where GEO ownership is naturally drifting: towards communications teams building authority and citations, even without a formal mandate.

Meanwhile, the underlying platforms keep shifting. Analysis of citation patterns across major AI platforms shows that only 11% of domains are cited by both ChatGPT and Perplexity, because each platform operates on fundamentally different citation logic. A brand that appears frequently in one AI tool can be invisible in another, which makes "who is responsible" an even harder question to answer with a single team or a single dashboard.

What should you do now?

Start by naming an owner, even an interim one. It doesn't need to be a new hire. It can be an existing SEO lead, a comms director or a marketing operations manager, but someone needs explicit responsibility for tracking how AI systems describe, cite and recommend your brand.

Second, put a measurement baseline in place. You don't need every metric on day one. Start by checking whether your brand appears at all when AI tools answer questions relevant to your category, then track that consistently over time. Checking your own AI visibility with a free audit, such as the one Sited offers at sited.online, is a straightforward way to get that baseline without building a measurement system from scratch.

Third, treat AI visibility as a shared workflow rather than a handoff. Semrush's research is explicit that the biggest gains come from integration, not separation. That means SEO, PR and content teams need a shared view of what AI systems are saying, not three separate reports that never get compared.

Finally, revisit ownership regularly. Because AI platforms and their citation behaviour shift quickly, a static "job done" mentality won't hold. The Muck Rack findings suggest most organisations are only at the start of working out how GEO fits their structure, so expect this to be revisited as budgets and priorities firm up over the rest of 2026.

Frequently asked questions

What is GEO and how is it different from SEO?

GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, is the practice of improving how often and how favourably your brand is mentioned, cited or recommended by AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Traditional SEO focuses on ranking in search results, while GEO focuses on being the source AI tools pull from and quote.

Why don't more companies have someone owning AI visibility?

According to Muck Rack's research, 75% of PR professionals see GEO as at least somewhat important, yet 29% say no one at their organisation owns it, largely because the discipline cuts across SEO, PR and marketing without fitting cleanly into any one existing role.

How do I know if my brand is currently visible in AI answers?

The simplest approach is to run a set of realistic buyer questions through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews and check whether your brand appears, and how it's described. Free tools such as Sited's audit at sited.online can also give you a quick read on your current standing.

Does integrating SEO and AI visibility actually make a measurable difference?

Yes. Semrush's 2026 research found that 81% of organisations that fully integrate SEO and AI visibility into a unified workflow reported increased traffic or leads from AI platforms, compared with only 36% among those managing the two separately.

Is AI search traffic actually worth chasing compared with traditional search?

Adobe data cited in Semrush's report shows AI traffic to US retail sites surged 1,324% between October 2024 and May 2026, while travel sector AI traffic rose 2,215% over the same period, suggesting the channel is growing fast enough that most businesses cannot afford to leave it unmanaged.